Reading indigeneity : the ethics of interpretation and representation

The transmission of indigenous stories is a fraught enterprise. In contrast to Western practices of the free circulation of ideas, many indigenous cultures view their stories as sacred, and have strict rules about who may tell certain tales, and in what settings and with whom they may be shared. Indigenous storytellers and novelists who want to tell contemporary stories also face the minefields of a history of (mis)representation of their cultures' values and practices. Australian literary scholar Clare Bradford picks her way carefully through this minefield, identifying its perils and proposing a self-reflexive practice that enables scholars to approach these works with sensitivity; Abenaki children's author Joseph Bruchac adds his own impressions and frustrations as an author to Clare's frank assessment of the possibilities of criticism, cross-talk, and mutual understanding in the fìeld.

Interpretation — appropriation : (making) an example of labor process theory

In this article, the author explores ethically problematic relations that may be reproduced within a genre of interpretive organizational research: namely, (U.K.) labor process theory (LPT). Although the author endorses LPT’s critical and explicitly antioppressive values, he argues that interpretive practices employed by core authors contradict the genre’s value base and function to silence and appropriate challenging empirical elements to affirm LPT’s valued interpretive schema. The author draws out deeply problematic implications of such appropriation through highlighting parallels between interpretation, appropriation, and colonization. The author ends by considering the nature of, and possibility for, more ethical “critical” interpretive organizational research.

On the automated interpretation and indexing of American football

This work combines natural language understanding and image processing with incremental learning to develop a system that can automatically interpret and index American Football. We have developed a model for representing spatio-temporal characteristics of multiple objects in dynamic scenes in this domain. Our representation combines expert knowledge, domain knowledge, spatial knowledge and temporal knowledge. We also present an incremental learning algorithm to improve the knowledge base as well as to keep previously developed concepts consistent with new data. The advantages of the incremental learning algorithm are that is that it does not split concepts and it generates a compact conceptual hierarchy which does not store instances.

Detecting indexical signs in film audio for scene interpretation

In this paper, we study the sound tracks in films and their indexical semiotic usage by developing a classification system that detects complex sound scenes and their constituent sound events in cinema. We investigate two main issues in this paper: Determination of what constitutes the presence of a high level sound scene and inferences about the thematic content of the scene that can be drawn from this presence, and classification of environmental sounds in the audio track of the scene, to assist in the automatic detection of the high level scene. Experiments with our classification system on pure sounds resulted in a correct event classification rate of 88.9%. When the audio content of a number of film scenes was examined, though a lower accuracy resulted with sound event detection due to the presence of mixed sounds, the film audio samples were generally classified with the correct high-level sound scene label, enabling correct inferences about the story content of the scenes.

Review: The preliminary study for the interpretation of electrochemical noise with continuous wavelet transform

Random fluctuations of the electrical quantities (electrode potential and cell current) in electrochemical systems commonly are referred to as electrochemical noise (ECN). The ECN signal for the corrosion of mild steel in reinforced concrete specimen was analyzed with the Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT). The original signal was transformed into a time-frequency phase plane with colors representing the coefficients of the CWT. The signal shows a self-similarity structure in the phase plane. Through this way, the chaotic nature of corrosion process is manifested.

Properties, processing and performance of rare and natural fibres : a review and interpretation of existing research results

A substantial up-to-date reference manual has been prepared which documents important issues for the supply chain of rare natural animal fibres. New developments in textiles have been included. Cashmere, mohair and camelid fibres have special properties of softness, smoothness and lustre, when compared with sheep wool. They also have other attributes which affect market prices and consumer perceptions, such as being rare and exotic luxuries, and are associated with expensive, comfortable and exclusive garments. These fibres add to the range of wool processing, and add value to wool textiles. Generally, knowledge about these animal fibres is limited, and research effort small compared with research into wool and other natural and man-made fibres. Compared with wool, rare natural animal fibres are more difficult and costly to process. Knowledge about processing these fibres is kept guarded as industrial knowledge. There are problems with clearly identifying rare natural animal fibres when goods are traded or fibres are blended, and fraud is a major concern for textile manufacturers and industry groups. Prickle discomfort in mohair and alpaca next-to-skin wear is a major concern for consumers and textile manufacturers. Natural colours, whiteness and yellowness of rare natural animal fibres are important fibre attributes for dyers and consumers, and the current products have both positive and negative colour attributes for processors. Past investments by RIRDC have made substantial gains in knowledge about fundamental and applied areas of knowledge on the properties, testing and processing performance of rare natural animal fibres.

Contact zones, third spaces, and the act of interpretation

The conceptual understanding of museums as ‘contact zones’ has been widely appropriated in the museum literature and beyond. But the discussion lacks empirical insights into actual experiences: What does ‘contact’ mean for the person experiencing it? How is it lived, negotiated and contested? Drawing on a long-term narrative study of global visitors to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa), this paper offers an empirical interrogation and theoretical refinement of the ‘contact zone’. It moves beyond the more usual focus on museological production by shedding light on the meanings made by museum visitors. This paper augments current normative and theoretical approaches with an ethnographic study of processes of intercultural mediation during cross-cultural encounters, translation and dialogue. This is done through a hermeneutic analysis of visitors’ acts of interpretation that facilitates an understanding of ‘cultural action’ in ‘contact zones’ as an interpretive ontological endeavour of the shifting Self within a pluralist cosmopolitan space.

Interpretation of ambiguous interoceptive stimuli in panic disorder and nonclinical panic

Cognitive bias in the misinterpretation of ambiguous interoceptive stimuli has been demonstrated in panic disorder. This study investigated whether this cognitive bias also occurs in people with nonclinical panic who are at risk of developing panic disorder. The responses of 25 people with nonclinical panic were compared to those of 20 people with panic disorder and 69 nonpanic controls on a measure of interpretive bias, the Brief Body Sensations Interpretation Questionnaire. There was evidence for interpretive cognitive bias for ambiguous interoceptive stimuli among the nonclinical panickers which did not differ from that of the people with panic disorder, but which differed from the nonpanic controls. High anxiety sensitivity predicted interpretive bias toward both interoceptive and external stimuli. Results therefore suggest that interpretive cognitive bias for ambiguous interoceptive stimuli may be a risk factor for the development of panic disorder.

Physical interpretation of the reference features in textural fractography of fatigue fractures

Reference features of a fatigue fracture surface are the reference texture and reference crack growth rate which are unambiguously mutually related. The reference texture is a subset of the image texture in SEM fractographs. It is expected to be common to all fractures caused by loadings in which significant events occur sufficiently regularly and frequently. The ratio of the reference and the conventional crack growth rate called reference factor is a characteristic of a particular loading. Its value may be related to the sequence of successive sizes of the cyclic plastic zone, while the mechanism of the effect of overloads follows the models of Wheeler and Willenborg. Application to a set of nine test specimens from aluminium alloy loaded by three different loading regimes is shown.